For NASA, Mars Beyond Reach Without Budget Boost

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If NASA continues to be funded at its current levels, a manned
mission to Mars could be permanently beyond reach, space industry
experts say.

When asked how soon astronauts could potentially set foot on
Mars under NASA's current budget constraints, Thomas Young,
the former executive vice president of Lockheed Martin, says the
outlook is bleak.

"With the current budget, bear with me, I would probably say
never," Young said during a meeting of the U.S. House of
Representative's space subcommittee today (June 19). [ Boldest
Mars Missions of All Time ]

Steven Squyres, the principal investigator for NASA's Opportunity
rover now exploring Mars, agreed. Squyres, an astronomy professor
at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., also gave testimony before
the House subcommittee.

Young said that if the public and government officials treat a
mission to Mars with the importance of the first mission to the
moon, it is possible to put boots on the Red Planet in a little
more than a decade from now.

"Mars is harder; there are a lot of significant issues to resolve
before going to Mars," Young said. "But I think that if we had
the same national commitment to it [as we did to going to the
moon], I would say by 2025, we could land on Mars."

The current draft of NASA's budget produced by the House asks the
space agency to develop a roadmap that will define the technical
capabilities needed to send humans to Mars sometime in the
future.

"I think the roadmap requirements in the bill are
overconstrained," Squyres said. "I think the idea of establishing
a roadmap for human exploration of Mars is great. It's one of my
favorite provisions in this bill, but I think it would be best to
allow NASA to do that problem, to work out that roadmap in its
technical details and find the best way to achieve that and then
come back with a set of recommendations for what the intermediate
milestones should be."

One of those intermediate steps could be another
mission to the moon. However, Young doesn't think that a
lunar mission is a necessary requirement for setting foot on
Mars.

"I do not believe that landing on the moon or operations on the
moon is a prerequisite to going to Mars," Young said. "Given Mars
as the focus, it's not necessary. It's probably a significant
resource consumer that will take away from the time and effort to
go to Mars."

As it stands now, the budget draft expressly prohibits NASA from
carrying out the
asteroid-capture mission that would send a robotic spacecraft
to redirect a near-Earth asteroid into lunar orbit. The mission
was written into President Barack Obama's draft of the NASA
budget released earlier this year.

"While the committee supports the administration's efforts to
study
near-Earth objects, this proposal lacks in detail a
justification or support from NASA's own advisory bodies," Rep.
Steven Palazzo said of the proposed mission. "Because the mission
appears to be a costly and complex distraction, this bill
prohibits NASA from doing any work on the project."

Under the newest draft, NASA's budget comes in at about $16.8
billion and authorizes the space agency to continue operations
for another two years, Palazzo said. The bill also cuts almost
$650 million in Earth sciences program funding and sets a Dec.
31, 2017, flight readiness deadline for NASA's
commercial crew program.

"This authorization bill reflects a sincere effort to maximize
return to the taxpayer while working to protect America's role as
the world leader in space exploration," Palazzo said. "It is
realistic and reflective of the hard choices we must make as a
nation and provides support for agreed-upon priorities."